Defense Attorney Jeff Nicholson said the Castle Doctrine and social media evidence helped in getting murder charges dropped against his juvenile client in the Alize Henderson murder case.
In early September 2015, Alize Henderson, 17, was fatally stabbed by a 16-year-old girl after an altercation at the girls home.
Castle Doctrine is a law that says, in part, a person has a right to self defense at home as long as the person does not provoke the attacker.
“The social media aspect of it was important from the stand point of the law in that we had to have that information to tell us which way to go – both as the state and as the defense on how to resolve this situation,” Nicholson said.
According to Nicholson, Alize and his client didn’t really know each other prior to the fight.
He said it was Alize’s friend who was actually bullying his client, and that in the hours before the fatal stabbing, Alize’s friend attacked his client at a 7-Eleven convenience store. He said Alize was there, but was not involved.
He said he believes what happened next was the result of peer pressure on Alize from her friends.
“I think these people put her up to it and it resulted in her death,” Nicholson said.
Nicholson said a few hours after the 7-Eleven incident, Alize went to his client’s home and ran at his client while she was in her front yard. He said his client was forced to defend herself.
He said social media messages between Alize and his client exchanged in the hours between the incident at 7-Eleven and the stabbing were ultimately the turning point in getting the charges dropped.
“I don’t believe that from the get-go that Ms. Henderson was out to bully my client,” Nicholson said. “I think Ms. Henderson was as much a victim by her own people that were egging her on as anything that my client might have done. I think that’s a form of bullying.”
Nicholson said while he believes justice was done for his client, there are people who should be paying for Alize’s murder.
“The justice is not done because the little girls that I believe talked Ms. Henderson into putting herself into harms way have not been held responsible and I don’t know how to do that,” Nicholson said.
